2016/04/06 by Qiao Song, Jing-Song Wang, Xueshang Feng +1 · 14 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Corona (planetary geology) #Coronal loop #Extreme ultraviolet #Extreme ultraviolet lithography #Flare #Ionosphere and magnetosphere dynamics #Loop (graph theory) #Observatory #Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics #Solar flare #Solar prominence #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph.SR
paper · pdf · doi:10.3847/0004-637x/821/2/83
published in The Astrophysical Journal 821(2), 83 (IOP Publishing) · 28 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ
arxiv created 2016/04/06 · openalex publication_date 2016/04/13 · arxiv updated 2016/04/27 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
ABSTRACT Solar post-flare loops (PFLs) are arcade-like loop systems that appear during the gradual phases of eruptive flares. The extreme ultraviolet (EUV) observations from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory ( SDO ) allow us to investigate the fine structures in PFLs. In this work, we focus on studying the dark post-flare loops (DPFLs) during X-class flares, which are more evident in SDO /AIA data than in previous EUV data. We identify and analyze the DPFLs observed by SDO and find that: (1) the DPFLs of an X5.4 flare have an average lifetime of 10.0 ± 5.5 minutes, an average width of 1022 ± 339 km, and an average maximum length of 33 ± 10 Mm, (2) blob-like falling features with a size close to the resolution of SDO /AIA are identified in the DPFLs and have an average velocity of 76 ± 19 km s −1 , and (3) the average widths of the DPFLs slightly increase with the characteristic temperatures in the AIA 304, 171, 193, and 211 Å channels. Our investigation shows that DPFLs are found in all of the 20 cases within this study, which suggests that they are a common phenomenon in X-class flares and are probably produced by the same mechanism that creates coronal rain.